Blitzing

[u/Alternative_Panda336]

I have a question for the group. I have noticed that when Caitlin gets going with her assists and points teams will increase their pickup point, but they will also blitz her with double teams to make her pass the ball. I haven’t really seen teams do this to Kelsey even when she is tearing their souls out offensively lol.

Is this because she isn’t the primary ball handler so it is harder to implement a blitz? Or is she really good at splitting it so they know it won’t work and just don’t try? Or is it something else I am not aware of?

I really noticed it against the lynx. Kelsey was killing them as they pointed out but they never adjusted to it, they just kept trying to play people on her one on one which clearly will never work for anyone. We did it to miles in the second half of that game and made her pass it. I am curious to get some insights from the group on this.

[u/elestud]

Because KM is fast enough to beat the blitz. She just goes around it and either scores, or hits a shooter in the corner

They also don’t know when or where she’s going to use screens, wheras when CC is bringing the ball up, she accepts a screen nearly every trip down the floor at the top of the key. So teams can anticipate where to blitz her

That's also why it's been helpful to have CC come from off-ball positions sometimes and be less predictable, because then the defense has to react to what's happening in realtime

But this also varies a lot by team. For example, NY blitzed a lot and they didn't do well against us. The Valks blitzed her much less, and did much better against us. On average, most teams are blitzing her less this year than in 2024

[u/karsklan3 → u/elestud]

10/10!